The Pilot Who Was Sucked Out A Jet Window At 17,400 Feet — And Lived

I learned of this incredible true story last week from commercial airline pilot and rock star Jamie Patchett. Thanks, Jamie. (Any factual errors in the telling of this story are entirely my doing — I’m not a pilot, so I don’t know all the intricate ins-and-outs of what happens on a flight deck, especially in a life-and-death crisis. I may not have realized the significance of some factors at play and I may have misinterpreted others. I’ve relied primarily on the accounts and testimony of experts and participants. All I know is that this is a freaking incredible story and there was only a one-in-a-million chance — at best — that Tim Lancaster could have possibly survived this ordeal.)

Captain Tim Lancaster

British Airways Flight 5390 on June 10,1990, should have been a jaunt — a straight-forward holiday hop in clear weather from Birmingham, England, to the Spanish resort city of Malaga on the Costa del Sol.

Aboard the BAC 1-11 short-haul jetliner that Sunday morning were 81 passengers, mostly vacationers, a cabin crew of four attendants and two experienced pilots in the cockpit — Captain Tim Lancaster, 42, who had logged 11,050 flight hours in a 20-year career, and First Officer Alastair Atchison, 39, with 7,500 flight hours.

Flight 5390′s scheduled 6:35 a.m. departure had been delayed, but the plane finally took off at 7:20 a.m. and quickly gained altitude over south-central England. At that point, with the plane approaching 17,400 feet and everything going smoothly, the pilots released their shoulder harnesses and the cabin crew began preparing the flight’s breakfast meal service.

Flight simulator mockup of a BAC 1-11 flight deck

Suddenly, at 7:33 a.m., there was an enormous bang as the front windshield on the captain’s side of the flight deck blew off and Lancaster was sucked headfirst out the gaping hole by the rapid decompression. Lancaster’s knees snagged on the flight controls, but the entire upper half of his body was outside the plane, being battered by the 345-mile-an-hour (555-kilometre-an-hour) slipstream and frozen by the -17C temperature at that altitude. His shirt was ripped from his body by the wind.

A re-creation of what happened 17,400 feet above the English countryside

At the same time, the door to the flight deck had been pulled off its hinges by the decompression and lodged on top of the navigation console, blocking the throttle control. The plane went into an accelerating descent — a dive — as co-pilot Atchison fought to regain control.

Flight attendant Nigel Ogden saw what was happening on the flight deck and climbed through the debris. As Lancaster slipped further out the window, Ogden grabbed the pilot’s legs and held on for dear life — both the captain’s and his own, since he could feel the suction force pulling him too.

In the co-pilot’s seat, Atchison regained control of the plane, began an emergency descent and broadcast a distress call. The rush of air inside the flight deck was so strong and loud, Atchison could hear nothing over the radio.

Meanwhile, as flight attendant Sue Price dealt with passengers, chief steward John Heward and flight attendant Simon Rogers rushed to help Atchison and Ogden on the flight deck.

Here’s how Ogden, in a 2005 interview, described what happened next:

“I was still holding Tim, but my arms were getting weaker, and then he slipped. I thought I was going to lose him, but he ended up bent in a U-shape around the windows. His face was banging against the window with blood coming out of his nose and the side of his head, his arms were flailing and seemed about six feet long. Most terrifyingly, his eyes were wide open. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live.

“I couldn’t hold on any more, so Simon strapped himself into the third pilot’s seat and hooked Tim’s feet over the back of the captain’s seat and held on to his ankles. One of the others said: ‘We’re going to have to let him go.’ I said: ‘I’ll never do that.’ I knew I wouldn’t be able to face his family, handing them a matchbox and saying: ‘This is what is left of your husband.’ If we’d let go of his body, it might have got jammed in a wing or the engines.

“I left Simon hanging on to Tim and staggered back into the main cabin. For a moment, I just sat totally exhausted in a jump seat, my head in my hands, then Sue came up to me, very shaken. In front of all the passengers, I put my arms around her and whispered in her ear: ‘I think the Captain’s dead.’ But then I said: ‘Come on, love, we’ve got a job to do.’ ”

Photo taken after Flight 5390 landed shows the fuselage of the plane sprayed with Tim Lancaster’s blood. Below, an investigator sticks his body out the window — on the ground, of course.

Finally, contact with air control was established and Atchison was cleared to make an emergency landing at Southampton.

The plane touched down safely on Southampton Runway 02 at 7:55 a.m. — just 22 minutes after the ordeal began, but a lifetime for those on board. Atchison did an incredible job of flying. His actions in bringing Flight 5390 down safely in such extraordinary circumstances (Did I mention that the runway was much shorter than a BAC 1-11 loaded with fuel needed to land?) are still studied by student pilots today. Atchison has avoided the limelight but his flying that day was truly heroic.

Rogers and Heward continued to hold on to their captain until emergency crews arrived and were able to pull him inside the plane.

Here’s Nigel Ogden again:

“He [Lancaster] was lying there, covered in blood, but to my amazement I heard him say: ‘I want to eat.’ I just exclaimed: ‘Typical bloody pilot.’ Luckily, he’d been in a coma throughout the ordeal, his body had just shut down. I went out onto the front steps, and shouted at the others ‘He’s alive!’ and then I cried my eyes out.”

Nigel Ogden on his way to hospital in Southampton, followed by Sue Price

Amazingly, against all odds, Lancaster had survived. He was in shock, suffering oxygen deprivation, frostbitten from the terrible cold, bloodied, bruised and battered with fractures to his right arm, left thumb and right wrist — but alive.

Here’s how the official accident report, released in 1992 following a lengthy British Department of Transport investigation, subsequently described those mid-air events. The language is oh-so-dry and formal, but is nevertheless terrifying.

The crew members were taken to hospital for treatment of their injuries, but all except Lancaster were released from hospital that day.

The crew of BA Flight 5390 with Captain Tim Lancaster, centre, in hospital: From left to right, First Officer Alastair Atchison, Chief Steward John Heward, Lancaster, Flight Attendants Nigel Ogden and Sue Price. Flight Attendant Simon Rogers was also present in the room but, for some reason I can’t fathom, was cropped from this version of the photo.

Ogden, with a separated shoulder and frostbite to his face and one eye, almost certainly should have remained in care longer. He took leave to recover and returned to work as a flight attendant. But the accident continued to haunt Ogden and, suffering from post-traumatic stress, he took early medical retirement from British Airways in 2001.

Captain Tim Lancaster, despite his injuries, was flying again within five months. He retired from BA in 2003 when he reached the company’s mandatory retirement age of 55, but he continued flying for another five years as a pilot for the easyjet budget airline. He’s now a happily retired — and still living — grandfather of five.

Co-pilot Alastair Atchison also eventually left British Airways, finally retiring at age 60 as a pilot for another British airline, Jet2, in June 2015, a quarter-century after he landed Flight 5390, with its captain dangling from a blown-out cockpit window, on Southampton Runway 02.

After Captain Tim Lancaster returned to duty, some members of the Flight 5390 crew gathered for a reunion photo. Clockwise from top: Lancaster, Rogers, Atchison and Heward. Ogden and Price were absent.

Re-enactment from Blow Out episode of Air Crash Investigation TV series

A lengthy investigation into the accident followed and a final report was released in January 1992. It made eight recommendations — all subsequently implemented — for improving Britain’s airline, airport and air-traffic-control standards and procedures.

The report was highly critical of aircraft maintenance procedures at Birmingham airport and came to the following conclusion as to the immediate cause of the cockpit window blowing out: The day before Flight 5390 took off, the windshield in question had been replaced. Of the 90 bolts used to secure the window to the fuselage, 84 were too small in diameter and the remaining six were too short. A critical failure was inevitable.

Only by incredible skill, courage and luck did no one die that sunny Sunday morning, June 10, 1990.

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Alan Parker

Veteran journalist Alan Parker will be going behind the red velvet rope and yellow police tape to find out what's really going on from the people who make--- shape--- spin--- report and transform the news.